How would you describe astringent taste?

mppatriots · March 7, 2012, 2:58am

My IPA is about five weeks in the bottle and it still has an after taste. I have been wrestling with the idea of it being either not conditioned long enough or if i have a valid off flavor. The more I think about it or taste it, the more that I think it is an off flavor. I’m just not sure, i don’t taste anything grassy, buttery, fruity, etc so i don’t think it is any of the other off flavors as described in Palmer.

Can anyone else offer their description of how they would describe astringent taste?

Also, i read that this after taste is caused by tannins, and tannins also contribute to the beer being hazy. My beer is very clear so i don’t know.

capnjb · March 7, 2012, 3:09am

It’s like a bitter tannin. If you were to make sun tea but left your tea (and tea bags) out in the sun for five days and a good portion of your water evaporated, what was left would probably give you a good example of astingrency.

capnjb · March 7, 2012, 3:12am

And to add it’s mostly mouth feel… puckery, dry, bitter. With extreme cases lending an unpleasant flavor to the dry mouth-ed-ness. At least that’s what I’ve experienced.

mppatriots · March 7, 2012, 3:18am

Yeah, I think that is what I taste. It was an hour ago that i drank the beer and i have the same mouth feel that you sometimes get when you drink tea without milk.

dmtaylo2 · March 7, 2012, 6:06am

Astringency is a feeling of dryness, not a flavor. It’s like having a mouthful of cotton balls, or the dryness you’d feel after eating a Saltine cracker, or sort of like the stickiness of a huge helping of peanut butter. It’s an effect that in extreme cases sucks all the moisture out of your mouth and leaves you thirsting for more. It is actually for these reasons that for sipping drinks such as wine and cider it can be a desirable effect, whereas for the working man’s drink, beer, which should be wet and quenching, it doesn’t quench your thirst so much, so it’s usually not desirable in beer.

drew22to375 · March 7, 2012, 7:00am

Take some green leaf tea like gunpowder tea and steep it way too long like 10 minutes. That would get you a good idea.

petey_mcgee · March 7, 2012, 1:51pm

I think it tastes like when or if you peel red grapes and eat the skins

halebrewer · March 7, 2012, 3:01pm

For what it’s worth, the IPA kit that I did several months back took many weeks to lose what I’d call a metallic taste…imagine sucking on a bunch of pennies…

2 months later, this is entirely gone and the beer is terrific.

This was a kit so perhaps wildly different that what you brewed.

I guess I’d wait it out for a while before dumping.

dobe12 · March 7, 2012, 3:27pm

I’ve had this problem a few times with IPA’s as well. You can get what is perceived as an astringent taste from a big early bittering addition and it’s also common if hop bursting or adding large amounts of hops late in the boil. If this is the case, it will subside over time. Let it sit for a few weeks if possible, sampling a beer every week or so. In time it will get better.

mppatriots · March 7, 2012, 11:33pm

Thanks for the input guys. I’ll definitely let the bottles sit around for a while and see if the taste conditions out.